llest
knowledge or even conception. I addressed Him with words from
the brain and the lips. An insuperable wall perpetually separated me
from Him.

Now my father became ill with heart trouble. Doctors, nurses, all the
dreaded paraphernalia of sickness pervaded the house. During two
terrible years he lingered on. Heart-broken at the sight of his
sufferings, I hardly left his bedside. Finally death released him. But
my health, which had always been good, was now completely
broken down; I became a semi-invalid, always suffering, too
delicate to marry. Under pressure of this continued wretchedness I
sank into a nerveless condition of mere dumb endurance--a passive
acceptance of the miseries of life "as willed by God," I assured
myself.

I entered a stagnant state of _mere_ resignation, whereas
accompanying the resignation there should have been a forward-piercing
endeavour to reach out and attain a higher spiritual level through
Jesus Christ: a persistent effort to light my lamp at the
Spiritual Flame to which each must _bring his own lamp,_ for it is
not lit for him by the mere outward ceremony of Baptism--that
ceremony is but the Invitation to come to the Light: for each one
individually, _in full consciousness of desire,_ that lighting must be
obtained from the Saviour. I had not obtained this light. I did not
comprehend that it was necessary. I understood nothing; I
was a spiritual savage. Vague, miserable thoughts, gloomy
self-introspections, merely fatigue the vitality without assisting the
soul. What is required is a persistent endeavour to establish an inwardly
felt relationship first to the Man Jesus. His Personality, His
Characteristics are to be drawn into the secret places of the heart by
means of the natural sympathy which plays between two hearts that
both know love and suffering, and hope and dejection. Sympathy
established--love will soon follow. Later, an iron energy to
overcome will be required. The supreme necessity of the soul before
being filled with love is to maintain the will of the whole spiritual
being in conformity with the Will of God. In the achievement of this
she is under incessant assistance: in fact everything in the spiritual
life is a gift--as in the physical: for who can produce his own sight
or his own growth? In the physical these are automatic--in the
spiritual they are accomplished only, as it were, "by request," and
this request a deep all-pervading desire.

We cannot of our ow